Harrow

"Village in southwestern Nockamixon Township at the junction of Durham Road (Route 611) [now, actually, Route 412] and Route 563. In coaching days it was described in mail stage advertisements as located "at the end of the river road" and was a regular stopping place for the Philadelphia and Easton stages. The village and tavern have always born the name of "The Harrow," so called from the figure of a harrow on the tavern sign board. The harrow was well known in this country, and especially in England, as the sign of a hostelry. Next door to the Sign of the Harrow in London, lived the master angler and biographer Izaak Walton, about 1624, carrying on the business of a sempster, or, man-milliner, and probably also a linen draper, or dealer in clothes. ... Our own Sign of the Harrow in Nockamixon is old. Probably its first landlord was John Wilson, a grandson of Ralph Wilson, the Indian trader with the Lenni Lenapes in Tohickon valley and with tribes farther northwest. Wilson was there from a date long before the Revolution down to about 1785. Two years later, it is learned from the diary of John Dyer of Dyerstown, a change of landlords occurred. Dyer notes on April 5, 1787, "George Shaw move to the Sign of the Harrow to keep the tavern." [1]

George Macreynolds, Place Names in Bucks County, Doylestown, Bucks County Historical Society, 1942.